“DAD!” Willow hissed.
“LEVI!” Thea pulled on my jeans.
Ignoring them both, I pointed to him.
He pulled his hat down more, but raised a small fist for me, causing a few people to laugh.
“Sit down!” Thea yanked, and I finally did, grinning from ear to ear. “This isn’t baseball. You can’t be hollering like that.”
“Thea.” I smiled at her. “Our son is playing in Wimbledon.”
She melted, her grin spreading. She put her hands to the side of her face and yelled, “I love you, sweetheart!”
I laughed, as he covered his face with both hands.
“O-M-G. You guys are so not cool,” Willow groaned, trying to hid her face.
“We know,” we said simultaneously. We happily gave up on being cool nineteen years ago. Looking back on it … it was the best choice we’d even made.
Sneak Peek at CHILDREN OF VICE
***Reader Discretion Advised***
VICE
noun'vis
a: moral depravity or corruption: wickedness
b: a physical imperfection, deformity, or taint
c: an abnormal behavior pattern in a domestic animal detrimental to its health or usefulness
PROLOGUE
“Monsters make choices.
Monsters shape the world.
Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better.
They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways. There are far, far worse things to be than a monster.”
~ Jim Butcher
ETHAN
I’m not sure when it happened…
When it began to crack and alter shape…
Looking back, there are so many moments that could be the one, the origin.
If you asked anyone who wasn’t family, they’d say it happened the day I was born.
That the moment I came into this world as a Callahan, the innocence, the morality, and the virtues that are normally common to everyone else were defective. Like a house with fractured windows. If you asked anyone within my family they’d say the windows were not fractured, but frosted and bulletproof because that is how they should be. After all, the people who were pointing at my windows were the same people who used blinds. That was my family all right…stupidly rich, dangerously powerful, unspeakably ruthless, and obsessed with extended metaphors. But the thing was…I didn’t care if I was a house with fractured or frosted or bulletproof windows. If people were curious to know the type of man I was, they were free to find out at their own peril.
What I cared about was when.